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How inconsistent government policies fuel crises
From Agaju Madugba, Katsina
A cross-section of Nigerians has continued to condemn the latest terrorist attack in Bakori Local Government Area where terrorists on February 3, 2023, reportedly killed well over 100 residents, including members of the Yakasai vigilance group. The Katsina Police Command confirmed that its men harvested 41 corpses of the deceased after the incident that day.
“The actual number of those killed cannot be ascertained because they are still counting the dead, nobody can tell you the accurate figure because some of the bodies are scattered in the bush,” Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Muntari Lawal, who visited Guga, Yargoje, Gidan Gamji communities in Bakori on Sunday said. But the member representing Bakori/Danja Federal Constituency at the National Assembly, Amiru Tukur, said the communities had recovered 80 corpses and still counting, as of last Sunday.
At a point in 2021, the insecurity situation had become apparently so uncontrollable and overwhelming to the level that an obviously harassed Governor Aminu Bello Masari issued the “arm yourselves directive,” ordering residents to procure arms and defend themselves against attacks by bandits. In what may well be a subtle protest, Masari has consistently argued that it is the constitutional responsibility of the Federal Government to protect the lives and property of citizens anywhere in Nigeria.
For Masari, the tag of “Chief Security Officer” which governors wear is a misnomer as he contends that “security is on the Exclusive List of the Nigerian Constitution which means it is exclusively a Federal Government affair. In matters of security, a governor is the Chief Security Officer of his state only in name because the various security chiefs working in the state take orders from their superiors in Abuja.”
Moreover, according to Masari, “Katsina State has a population of about eight million people and how many policemen do we have in Katsina State? From my assessment of policemen in the Local Government Areas, I don’t think we have up to 3,000 policemen in the entire state. Let us assume that they are up to 3,000, what it means is that we have a policeman for every 200,000 people. How effective can that policeman be? Then we come to arms and ammunition, what do the police have?”
Enter the Yansakai, the group whose membership of terrorists was depleted during the Bakori attack. Long before the Masari order that citizens should defend themselves, the Yankasai had actually taken up the responsibility to protect their communities in the face of persistent attacks. But reports indicated that they might have overstretched their self-imposed tasks by engaging in certain criminal acts including alleged extra-judicial killing of citizens they claimed to protect.
Yan sai kai in the Hausa language means people who take up arms to defend their communities from attacks, ostensibly from bandits in the circumstances. The group also operates in the equally security decadent and bandits-invested Zamfara State and in other parts of the North-West.
In May 2020, the Zamfara State government proclaimed the Yankasai an illegal group and ordered the police to clamp down on them. The police arrested an alleged Yankasai kingpin there, a certain Bala Minister, over the “gruesome murder” during Sallah festivities that year.
In February 2022, the Katsina State government threaded the Zamfara path and proclaimed the Yankasai an illegal group, directing the police to smoke out the members wherever they may be in the state.
Defending the action then, Masari’s Special Assistant on security matters, Ibrahim Katsina, said that, “the measure was taken in consideration of their overzealous criminal activities, leading to extrajudicial killings of innocent persons and looting their property, under the guise of Yan Sa Kai operations.”
And, the Katsina police added its weight, saying that “the Nigeria Police Force and indeed other sister security agencies will deal decisively with any person or group of persons found parading themselves as Yansakai in the state. The Command will not fold its arms while some disgruntled members of the public take laws into their hands, brazenly killing innocent citizens, destroying and looting public property without recourse to the rule of law,” according to the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Gambo Isah.
Barely a year later in February 2023, the Yansakai villains as the government officially designated them then, have become heroes overnight following the Bakori massacre. Apart from providing relief materials to families of victims and survivors of the attack, government has since set up a probe panel to investigate the killings. As usual, President Muhammadu Buhari who was in Katsina last Monday spitfire, without heat, and condemned the attackers. The All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu, announced a donation of N100 million to the families of the victims. Other politicians and political parties in the state have equally cashed in on the situation to advance their political campaigns ahead of the forthcoming general elections. In fact, Bakori has become a tourist centre of sorts since February 3, 2023, as the affected communities continue to host all manner of visitors, on the condolence.
Police interim report of the incident, according to the PPRO, described the victims as belonging to an “outlawed Yankasai group” who had embarked on a mission to retrieve cattle which the bandits stole from the community. “They traced the footpath of the hoodlums to a location at Yargoje forest but unfortunately, the terrorists planned and launched a coordinated ambush on the Yansakai. The hoodlums shot and killed 41 Yansakai and wounded two others. The Area Commander, Malumfashi, led a team of policemen to the scene and recovered the corpses and injured to Kankara General, Hospital,” the report said.
Even in the face of the proscription of the Yankasai group and their failed and bloody adventure to reclaim the property of members of their community from hoodlums, the SSG told the bereaved communities that, “as we count the number of the dead, people should learn to be courageous enough to confront the devil before they finish them. Don’t wait for the government, before the government and security agencies intervene, the damage would have been done. So, organise yourselves to confront them.”
Whatever the figures of the dead that will eventually come up at the end of the day, Katsina may have attained an unenviable premier position in the history books as a killing field with at least parts of 17 out of the 34 Local Government Areas officially designated “frontline” locations where hapless residents remain at the mercy of marauding terrorist-bandits.
In many cases in the past, the bandits rustled cattle, vandalised property and slaughtered residents while on a number of other incidents, the invaders somehow put on benevolence garb by sparing the lives of residents but sent them packing out of their ancestral homes and razed their houses.
